general musings....

Looking at the stuff available on ebay... there is a huge amount of different sets and bits out there. The older Tomy sets with the dark blue rails are 'mostly' compatible with the newer stuff with the light blue rails. The main difference being that with the earlier sets, the locomotives are bigger than the present ones and may not fit under the bridges of the new sets. These older locos also are able to be reversed by the special reversing track, which flicks a switch under the loco body between the wheels. These special switches are often built-in to some of the things like the 'Engine shed' with the workmen hanging upside-down from the roof, and the train wash and lumber tipper. Of course, they have no effect on the new locos which do not have the reversing capabilities. Another thing I noticed about the older sets is that the long sloping rails to take a train up and down from the high track have 'teeth' along the sides which engage in similar teeth on the outside of the loco driving wheels, obviously to help the train ascend the incline without slipping back. The new locos do not have these teeth on their wheels so if used with these steeper inclines may come into difficulties. The red high track supports of the older sets are quite a bit higher than the newer series, and are needed to go with the dark blue sloping rails. They can be combined with newer stuff, just be aware of the differences when planning your layout. I find that, because I tend to make my layouts as a long continuous track, I have the trains ascending the newer style slopes and rising curves to get to either a 'double-height' or 'one and a half' height which is similar to the red supports, and then descending by the steeper dark blue sloping rails.
The older Tomy sets came out before the Thomas & Friends craze took-off, so the engines and trucks are more 'toy' like. They and the stations and other accessories do have 'Lego' type studs though, so they can be built upon and added to with the huge range of Lego bits and blocks. For example the truck bodies often remove from their chassis, leaving a row of lego studs which could be added to.
There is a large four legged Crane which has little wheels built into the base for moving around, and can lift logs with a special hand. No longer part of the Tomy range, this goes well with the Timber yard set which dumps logs into a special tipping wagon which then tips them into a hopper beside the track.

turntable trouble...

The old small turntable... only a single engine can get on...













the large turntable and 'roundhouse' engine sheds






... in close-up







The small red/yellow turntable has seven connections of the standard type.
The problem is that the new large turntable has only four standard connections... at N.S.E.W.
the remaining six connections are of an entirely new diamond shape. If you buy the full set with the engine sheds then you will get a few of the straight rails with this type of connection at one end, but not enough for all six places to connect to the turntable. If you lose any of these special pieces then there seems to be nowhere to find replacements.
I have noticed in ebay some sellers selling the turntable in a used condition, and often without any or all of these rails. Also, there appears to have been a special extra large set of Tomy Thomas and Friends for sale called the 'Ultimate' set. Exactly where it has been on sale I don't know, it certainly looks to be a bargain. I think it probably went on sale for about GBP.100 in the UK and US$ 100 in the USA. I have seen a couple on sale, new and unused on ebay in the last month. What I have also noticed is that some sellers have obviously got hold of these Ultimate sets and broken them up, for sale in smaller lots, and at a good profit. The trouble is that this Ultimate set has the new turntable, but none of the special diamond-ended rails, so the sellers are selling the turntable as new and unused, but on its own. Unsuspecting buyers will find themselves frustrated when they try to find the special rails needed.
I wrote to Tomy.co.uk about the problem, suggesting they contact Tomy and ask for special short adapter rails to be made available. Unfortunately they either did not read my message properly or just misunderstood it. Anyway they sent me some ordinary straight rails (two boxes of four each), which was very nice of them, but it didn't solve the problem. I f I write to Tomy Japan, they will see I am English and just refer my message to Tomy UK...... :-(
UPDATE... I got onto Tomy UK again and directed them to this post to see if they understood the problem....they replied that the 'diamond' shaped rails are available from them, so contact their careline.

look in ebay...

for those of you in the UK or anywhere else where the track items I have shown you are not available in the stores, look in ebay.... you can nearly always find them there.
I have given links to a couple of ebay stores, 'Panpon' is a dealer in Thailand, whilst 'kittymagic23' is based in HongKong. Both can get most of the stuff I have shown you below, and even including postage are no more expensive than if the items were available at home.

more track items

A 'walled' straight and curve, usually comes in a set with the station and grey coloured supports.
a wide twin-track tunnel which can also receive a normal curve on top (although actually getting it to fit in a circuit is difficult). The parallel straight and curved rails are shown too.
the tunnel on its own
a loop to reverse direction













there is also available a single curved rail which has a larger radius than the standard one, actually equivalent to the outside curve in the twin parallel curves.
I have also seen an extra long straight piece which is the same as two standard straights in one, and a similar extra long curved piece.
There is a new 'wiggley' piece which is multi-segmented and as long as two straights which can be bent to fit almost any situation where track ends do not come together right and in line.

some track etc. available here in Thailand

a close view of the station on supports. It is similar to the city station but has a track on each side. The lead-in piece at each end are either running from the standard parallel twin rails, or if you flip it over, run to a single track.
This end shows the side with the single track.











The overall view.


a wide parallel point.
stop track, crossing, and 3-way points.
standard points, parallel points, y-parallel points and y-points.

the two or three way auto points. can be put to manual or to be tripped auto change by train approaching points from the right-hand end.

auto and manual switching from one parallel track to another

my thoughts about layouts

I do have a large amount of track and accessories and when I design a layout I try to use as much of it as I can. Instead of having several different circuits with several trains running and the chance of collisions I tend to make my circuit as all one long track. The trains may be seen to travel in different directions and on different levels, and with much of the track being twin rails they also seem to go different ways on the two tracks, but actually they all connect up to be one single line. This avoids many collisions, though not all. Points may be left in the wrong direction or trains of differing speeds can catch up with slower ones, so one must always be alert, maybe allowing a slower train to stop at a station or in a passing-loop whilst the express goes by.
My large layout in the photos allowed a fast train to run for over five minutes before returning to the same spot.
A good item available here in Thailand, which I haven't seen for sale in the UK, is the auto 2 or 3 way points, which when set to auto instead of manual will automatically change the point to the next line as a train passes. This means you can have a train passing it put onto a different circuit each time it passes, although it can get confusing if several trains are run at once!

About four years ago I wrote a long letter to Tomy Japan expressing my thoughts about the system. I think the general robustness of the plastic track is good, especially where kids are concerned. And the battery operation instead of electrified rails is also better for kids. The present connectors between trains, trucks and carriages are awful, being very awkward to connect and release. I think the original magnetic ones were far superior. I stated that most kids watching Thomas the Tank Engine on TV, DVD, or VHS would want to replicate as much as they could with their train sets. I suggested they make the larger turntable (at that time only the small red/yellow one was available) and the big engine shed, which they have now gone some way to reproducing with a set of single sheds instead. Also I said they should make a coal loading gantry and the dockside crane plus the big terminus station with over-roof, all now produced to some degree.
I also said that adults and even children get bored with just watching the trains go around. The adult railway modellers usually like to get involved with various shunting activities, loading and arranging trains of trucks etc.
I said that if these abilities were included in the range, then the kids would greatly extend the age in which they would continue to find their tomy train sets interesting.
To that end the following would be necessary.
a. A better and easier coupling system.
b. ability to have engines go forward or reverse (also available with the original Tomy product.)
c. Radio control with different channels being assigned to different engines. Although kids do not mind getting their hands in there they often derail the trains whilst trying to turn on/off the switch on the engines, and it would reduce the need for stopping tracks.
The last is obviously the hardest to implement, but I did see a radio controlled train in one of the Japanese catalogues (about 2003). The price of radio controlled stuff seems to be very cheap now with cars etc. available at very low price.

CLICK ON ALL PHOTOS FOR A LARGE SIZE which you can save and view at home in more detail....


I hope anyone with any questions about the Tomy range will ask them. I am far from an expert, but may be able to offer advice.
Although the Tomy brand is Japanese in origin they are sold worldwide. However, the complete range is probably only available in Japan. I have noticed that in the UK not all items appear for sale. Here in Thailand they get nearly all of the track types and some of the boxed sets from Japan with Japanese writing on the boxes. I believe new items are released in Japan a good year before the rest of the world.
The prices here in Thailand are a good bit cheaper than the UK, so if you are coming here on holiday....

just a photo I forgot to add to the ones from the Big set, showing the road section too...